"He's my brother."
Newt stares for a moment, unspeaking. His lips part in shock, but I can't bring myself to explain everything just yet. Most of me is numb with a cold, bruised feeling that washes over me in waves in each second that passes since Thomas shut himself into the maze.
I had just gotten my memories back- my memories of him. One thing in this world had made sense, and now he's gone.
"How'd you know?" Newt finds the voice to ask what I know he's been dying to. I look up through watery eyes, my nose reddened and cheeks stinging with salty tears.
One look at him, and the floodgates open.
My mouth opens to give a simple reply, but wave after wave of repressed memories crashes through: a sea of perfect guilt.
I tell him everything, and he listens to my every word, brown eyes trained on mine as if to silently tell me that I'm not crazy, to tell me he's here for me- he always has been.
I tell him everything- almost everything.
I tell him about the memories, the glitches. I tell him about the afternoons in the foreign lab with Thomas, my brother, about our separation, and about Julian's sacrifice.
He listens to my every word, present as ever, gaze on mine all the while.
And yet, despite all this, I hold back. I can't bear to tell him that this is my fault, that it's my fault he's here in the first place.
If I tell him that Julian and I created the maze, I will lose him, and now, with Thomas gone, he's all I have left.
- - -
The metal of the roof of the compound presses cool against my back as I lie facing upwards, the a distant breeze causing a slight shiver to rack my body.
The sun is rising over the horizon; the faraway treeline in the distance gives way to the first few rays of the morning.
I bring my hands up to my face and rub them together for warmth.
"Look how small," Thomas says from the side, holding his hand up in front of the rising sun, framing it between two fingers and pretending to hold it. I smile, turning sideways to look at him.
"Happy birthday, Tommy." I say quietly.
He turned eleven yesterday; that makes him two years my senior now, but he hasn't changed a bit: a fact for which I'm grateful.
I look over at his face, studying him for a brief moment. He's outgrown the roundness I used to find in his cheeks and it's now replaced by a narrower frame.
His eyes are still the same shade of brown- a soft mix of the familiarity I've grown with since I can remember.
"How'd you remember?" He asks me. I smile.
"Counted."
There are no such thing as days here. Not for us. They don't let us know anything, not even such simple of a number.
"Three hundred and sixty five." I say. He nods.
"Feels the same." He says, "being eleven."
"You think they'll get you anything?" The doctors never tell us anything. Not even our own birthdays. We rely on counting days to sustain any form of regular schedule- a sense of time passing in numbers greater than hours or minutes.
Thomas doesn't bother counting, but I make sure to with each day that passes.
It reminds me that I'm a part of something bigger, yet something as simple as time.
YOU ARE READING
Newt x Reader || A13
FanfictionHe was alone; he was fragile; he was scared, crumbling under the weight of a leader's role. He is the glue. She is bold; she is determined; she is confused, haunted by visions of her forgotten past. She is the trigger. From the ashes of a world dest...
